LIBONCATIPU REIGNS SUPREME

[dr4b]

Get this. It's almost 7am, and I am at home getting ready to sleep not because we hit a slow puzzling time and I wanted to come take a nap, but BECAUSE WE ACTUALLY FINISHED THE ENTIRETY OF PUZZLEHUNT. We finished 6th out of 72 teams. HOLY SHIT, I've been waiting like three years for this.

This is awesome, now I can nap for a few hours, go back to Redmond just to hang out and play board games or something for a few hours until it's time for closing ceremonies at 6pm.

WOOHOO

WE RULE

Comments

[aquatwo.livejournal.com]

wow, awesome! grats!

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

Awesome!

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Woo-hoo indeed!

I'd love to hear more about it at some point, if you're inclined to write more about it, or point us to links.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Nice!

So, are you obligated to come up with a puzzle for next year now or something?

[dr4b]

no, that would only happen if we won, or were close enough to winning and enough teams declined running the next one.

though I am thinking of coming up with a series of baseball puzzles for my blog and seeing if anyone wants to work through them...

[thanatos47.livejournal.com]

so glad that you had fun! one of our goals was to have more teams experience the all of the metas. we'd be happy to have you write puzzles for puzzleday!

[dr4b]

Err, okay... who are you? :)

[thanatos47.livejournal.com]

i'm dana young, one of the hosts of pha and a puzzlewriter for puzzleday. puzzleday is an 8 hour event for the microsoft interns held in the summer. because many of the interns are not "puzzle people" and due to the shortness of the event the puzzles tend to be much easier than the puzzlehunt ones. we try to have 30-35 puzzles including at least one meta.

the puzzleday staff is made up of a few people from a lot of different puzzlehunt teams and some fulltimers who played as interns. no previous puzzlewriting is required. in fact, we have a brief tutorial about how to write good puzzles for new writers. our next meeting is monday the 19th at 6pm in 16/3000.

[dr4b]

Ah, okay, I remember you from the wrapup ("I do not like this in my hunt, I think this puzzle I shall punt").

I've done Puzzle Safari in the past and written puzzles for other things (and regularly playtest for the CMU PuzzleQuest event), and was even on a team for Iron Puzzler (Liboncatipu, we did the lego wordforms puzzle if you were there), but -- ummm -- I don't think I'm allowed to be a writer for a Microsoft intern event because, well, I don't work at Microsoft. I've just been on my PH team for MS puzzling events since the Alice hunt a few years ago, which is why it was so great to finally actually finish, since we were always like "Do you think we'll ever be, you know, one of those 'good teams'?"

[thanatos47.livejournal.com]

yes, that was me. good memory of the poem.

i did play in iron puzzler. i wrote the paper puzzle with pictures that represented the last names of singers (voted most popular paper puzzle :D). you only aren't allowed to participate on your end. i'm not an employee either. however, if it's against your contract to volunteer for a recruiting event at microsoft then you shouldn't.

[dr4b]

Well, I can't actually get into MS buildings on my own, nor can I get to the east side at 6pm on a weekday anyway. There's nothing in my contract about it, but I always figured that the preparation for these events were done by MS people.

I'm trying to remember the last names of singers... was that one where they were pictures all in one big L shape? I remember the non-paper puzzles a lot better than the paper ones. I do remember there was an L-shaped crossword that we had an awful time with for some reason.

[thanatos47.livejournal.com]

yes, it was in a big L shape, but it was not a crossword puzzle. it was the one where the pictures were rotated to indicate which letter to pull out. there were a couple dozen pictures as i recall.